I mention calcium and you respond “milk.”

Dairy products are marketed for their high calcium virtue (the unique position*). However, calcium deficiency is not known to occur in humans on any natural diets. The worldwide observation that billions of people grow normal adult skeletons without consuming cow’s milk or calcium supplements should be enough to reassure every person of the adequacies of a plant-food-based diet, and forever erase from people’s minds the question, “Where do you get your calcium on a vegan diet?” (If osteoporosis is crossing your mind as being due to a lack of calcium, think again: An acidic condition, secondary to consuming excess proteins, loaded with amino acids, causes this pre-fracture condition.)

Believing cow’s milk is a “good” and a necessary source of calcium leads to heart disease, cancers, diabetes, arthritis, and infectious diseases; conditions affecting more than half of the Earth’s nearly 8 billion inhabitants.

Damage to Patient Earth: Dairy farms, like beef ranches, are populated by fermenting (methane), manure producing (methane and nitrous oxide), feed-, production- and transportation-requiring (carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide) cattle. Individual dairy cows are more harmful to the Planet than are cattle raised for supermarket coolers because of the length of time they spend as “planet-polluters.” The natural life span of a cow is 26 years. Beef cattle are typically slaughtered when they are young cows, between 12 to 24 months of age. Most dairy cows live 6 years then are turned into slabs of meat.  The world has more than doubled the amounts of dairy foods produced 50 years ago.

*Effective marketing focuses on the “unique positioning” of products, promoting the most exceptional characteristic of a selected merchandise to enhance sales, regardless of the consumer benefits.